Ask HN: Who are your favorite poets?

Post by V-2 » Tue, Mar 31, 2015, 9:24 AM UTC

Post by ajuc » Tue, Mar 31, 2015, 9:39 AM UTC

alexmorse wrote: post #235

Poems > Poets "The Abnormal is Not Courage" The Poles rode out from Warsaw against the German tanks on horses. Rode knowing, in sunlight, with sabers, A magnitude of beauty that allows me no peace. And yet this poem would lessen that day. Question the bravery. Say it's not courage. Call it a passion. Would say courage isn't that. Not at its best. It was impossible, and with form. They rode in sunlight, Were mangled.…

Post by olifante » Tue, Mar 31, 2015, 9:42 AM UTC

mzh wrote: post #199

I like Rimbaud quite a lot: "The star wept rose-colored [. . .]" The star wept rose-colored in the heart of your ears, The infinite rolled white from your nape to your loins The sea turned ruddy at your vermilion nipples And Man bled black on your sovereign flank. Another: "The wolf howled under the leaves [. . .]" The wolf howled under the leaves As he spat out the fine feathers Of his meal of fowl: Like him I consu…

Post by foxhedgehog » Tue, Mar 31, 2015, 9:46 AM UTC

  Lullaby

  W. H. Auden, 1907 - 1973
  
   Lay your sleeping head, my love,
  Human on my faithless arm;
  Time and fevers burn away
  Individual beauty from
  Thoughtful children, and the grave
  Proves the child ephemeral:
  But in my arms till break of day
  Let the living creature lie,
  Mortal, guilty, but to me
  The entirely beautiful.
  
  Soul and body have no bounds:
  To lovers as they lie upon
  Her tolerant enchanted slope
  In their ordinary swoon,
  Grave the vision Venus sends
  Of supernatural sympathy,
  Universal love and hope;
  While an abstract insight wakes
  Among the glaciers and the rocks
  The hermit’s carnal ecstasy.
  
  Certainty, fidelity
  On the stroke of midnight pass
  Like vibrations of a bell,
  And fashionable madmen raise
  Their pedantic boring cry:
  Every farthing of the cost,
  All the dreaded cards foretell,
  Shall be paid, but from this night
  Not a whisper, not a thought,
  Not a kiss nor look be lost.
  
  Beauty, midnight, vision dies:
  Let the winds of dawn that blow
  Softly round your dreaming head
  Such a day of welcome show
  Eye and knocking heart may bless,
  Find the mortal world enough;
  Noons of dryness find you fed
  By the involuntary powers,
  Nights of insult let you pass
  Watched by every human love.

Post by probably_wrong » Tue, Mar 31, 2015, 10:09 AM UTC

aggie wrote: post #298

jfaucett wrote: post #176

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"I want to do to you , what the spring does to the cherry trees." I've never seen that in english, so I looked it up ( http://albalearning.com/audiolibros/neruda/poema14-sp-en.htm... ) I guess it goes without saying, but english really doesn't do him justice, rhyming trees with kisses is pretty poor compared to cerizos and besos which is perfect rhyme. But I suppose poetry is about the most difficult thing to transla…

> cerizos and besos which is perfect rhyme Since letters in Spanish have only one sound, '-izos' and '-esos' cannot be made to rhyme without distorting the pronunciation of one of the words. I don't see how that makes 'perfect' rhyme.